Writer's block, an owner's guide: Parkinson’s Law
I mentioned Parkinson’s Law a few days back. I’m not sure how well-known the law is to Americans or to you young people (creak) so let me “remind” you that the law is that work expands to fill the time available for its completion.
Northcote Parkinson’s essay on the subject may be the first place where I heard about writer’s block. But let me say that more exactly.
Northcote Parkinson’s humorous article in a humorous magazine may be the first place where I realized that procrastination could be discussed in a pseudo-scientific way.
The first place where I realized that when you notice your own odd behavior you can make sense of it in terms of principles that apply to most people in most situations. Childhood experiences like that are probably what nudges us towards being psychologists decades later.
Making sense of your own life in terms of general principles is a great thing. It doesn’t just help you to predict and manage your responses in situations; it normalizes them (it says “perhaps you are not strange”). Good news for a child and for the child in all of us.
But there is a downside to generalization. Ideas like “writer’s block” are conjured into existence.
Instead of saying “I don’t feel like writing this morning” you are allowed to say “I’ve caught a disease, I know it has made a lot of other writers unhappy, so now I guess writing is going to be difficult or impossible for the rest of my life.” And then you are the victim not of a disease but of an idea in your head.
Here’s Parkinson’s opening statement in support of the claim that work expands to fill the time available:
“General recognition of this fact is shown in the proverbial phrase ‘It is the busiest man who has time to spare.’ Thus, an elderly lady of leisure can spend the entire day in writing and dispatching a postcard to her niece at Bognor Regis. An hour will be spent finding the postcard, another in hunting for spectacles, half an hour in a search for the address, an hour and a quarter in composition, and twenty minutes in deciding whether or not to take an umbrella when going to the pillar box in the next street. The total effort that would occupy a busy man for three minutes all told may in this fashion leave another person prostrate after a day of doubt, anxiety, and toil.”
Exactly.
Published on May 16, 2005 at 8:31 am. Linking to this article? Thank you! The permanent address is http://www.todayiwrite.com/journal/parkinsons-law.html
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